2017 in Review: Africa

So said Aristotle almost 2300 years ago – and 2017 was no different. Long serving strongmen saw their decade-long regimes collapse into dust in the space of weeks, while other leaders are starting to be noticed on the international stage.

South Africa: Zilch for Zuma

December saw the contentious election of a new head for the ruling African National Congress party. Party members were offered the choice of two main candidates, Nkosazana Dlamini-Zuma, the ex-wife of President Jacob Zuma and widely touted as his chosen successor, and Cyril Ramaphosa, an anti-apartheid activist and close confidante of Nelson Mandela.

Ramaphosa won 2,440 votes to Dlamini-Zuma’s 2,261. Ramaphosa campaigned on an anti-corruption platform, with corruption scandals having followed the Zuma administration like flies to a rotting carcass.

Gambia started this year in political turmoil as the autocratic President of 22 years, Yahya Jammeh, refused to concede electoral defeat to opposition leader Adam Barrow. After weeks of chaos, the Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS) formed a military taskforce, headed by Senegal, that threatened to remove Jammeh should he have decided to remain in power.

Uhuru Kenyatta won the elections in Kenya twice this year. The legitimacy of his first victory in August was challenged by his opponent, Raila Odinga, and it was declared null and void by the Supreme Court. A rerun was called only for Odinga to pull out of it, citing insufficient changes to the electoral commission between the two elections.

Robert Mugabe entered his 93rd year in firm control, governing Zimbabwe much as he had done since 1980. However, change was afoot and within the space of a few weeks he found himself resigning from the job he had said would be his for life.

The ambitions of his wife did what his persecution of white farmers, massacres of the Ndebele, bankrupting the country and destroying the economy could not. Her firing of then vice president Emmerson Managagwa soon turned out to be a catastrophic mistake. He left the country only to return two weeks later with the military at his back.

President Muhammadu Buhari has spent months of this year in the UK being treated for an undisclosed illness. While now seemingly on the mend, there was speculation at the beginning of the year that this was the end of the president, with his vice president de facto running the country.

On Boxing Day, Liberia elected footballing icon George Weah as its new president. The former World Footballer of the Year and AC Milan superstar follows other sporting stars (such as Ukraine’s Vitali Klitschko (Mayor of Kiev), Brazil’s Romario (Senator for the state of Rio de Janeiro), Pakistani opposition leader Imran Khan and Filipino senator Manny Pacquiao) into politics.

Liberia’s President elect has promised that “change is on”. Whether or not he delivers is perhaps irrelevant – the mere fact that Liberia has seen a peaceful transitional power as a momentous achievement for a country that 20 years ago was embroiled in a brutal civil war. The current president Ellen Johnson Sirleaf has also won worldwide accolades for stepping down after 12 years in power.

Togo: Protests call for the President to go

Political unrest continues in the small West African republic. The current president Faure Gnassingbé is attempting to rewrite the constitution to give himself more terms in office. Towards the end of the year deadly protests rocked the country calling for an end to the Gnassingbé dynasty’s 50-year reign.

For now the situation is unresolved with mediators trying to break an impasse. Togo currently holds the rotating presidency of ECOWAS, which could explain why no coalition has been formed to remove him, as was the case in The Gambia.

Ghana be a surprise:

New president Nana Akuffo-Addo has made waves in Ghana, he has wooed his domestic audience with his steadfast opposition to the practice of illegal small scale mining (a practice known as galamsey in Ghana). Yet it is on the international scale that he has truly shone.

Ghana has achieved the diplomatic coup of entertaining the Queen of Denmark, the Italian and Dutch Prime Ministers of Italy, and the Presidents of Estonia, France and Germany, all in the space of six weeks.

When the president hosted Emmanuel Macron of France he made a speech that went viral across the continent. Addo boldly asserted that while he was happy to receive aid from the West, he did not want to be a recipient forever.

It has galvanised many African leaders to start pressuring Europe to help sort out the problem, to encourage other African nations to come to grips with the scale of the problem, and calling on Libya to eradicate slavery in it’s borders.

Stuart has an Mphil in African Studies from Cambridge University, his interests include African politics and economic development across the African continent. He has been an volunteer economics teacher in Accra, Ghana and carried out a fieldwork in Ghana for a research project for his master’s thesis.

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